


Come to Me by Moonlight

by RecessiveJean



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crossdressing, F/F, Regency, Secret Identity, Treat, probable anachronisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 04:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9700124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/pseuds/RecessiveJean
Summary: Veronica always had an inkling she might one day be waylaid by a dashing highwayman, so she rehearsed herself accordingly.She had not anticipated, however, that any girl could look quite so fine in a hat.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



When they were children, William had taught his sister how to be a highwayman. He and Veronica agreed it was the sort of thing she ought to know, and with their other siblings considerably older and Veronica’s governess deplorably lax, they could see nobody else was planning to teach her. Thus it fell to William to deliver the necessary instruction.

“You must wear a fine hat with a great feather in it, stand with your pistol drawn and menace the driver.”

Veronica nodded solemnly. She adjusted the hat they had borrowed from their father, having carefully neglected to ask his permission first, and aimed her small split-twig toy pistol steadily at William astride his hobby horse.

“All right, I think I’ve got it. Only, how does one menace the driver?”

“You cry ‘stand and deliver!’ of course,” said William, quite understanding that his sister’s education to this point had prepared her for none of the truly important parts of life. “And then everyone must surrender all you demand.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Veronica saw the logic in this, and the game carried on splendidly from that point.

But childhood games carried out on the sunsplashed green lawn of a country home are a far cry from the suitable pursuits of young ladyhood, and it seemed William was incorrect in his estimation of how thoroughly his sister was being prepared for her actual lot in life. Not once in all her seventeen years was Veronica called upon to menace a stage, but she was too frequently obliged to stitch a sampler, make pleasant conversation with unpleasant people, and dance the _quadrille_.

Dancing the _quadrille_ was actually not so bad; Veronica loved to dance, so when the invitation came from her newly-married elder sister to attend a party, she was dismayed by her parents’ reluctance to bless her acceptance.

“There have been three holdups in the past month, darling,” her mother fussed. “I shouldn’t like to think of you on that road after dark. Anything might befall you!”

“Then you and Papa must come with me,” Veronica suggested. “Henrietta did invite you as well. She’s so happy to be able to invite people to her home, I think she’s gone entirely overboard. You’d better visit before she comes to her senses and forbids us all entry.”

“You know I don’t care for dances, darling,” her mother sighed. “Not at my time of life. And as to us coming along for your safety, of what earthly use would we be against an armed bandit? No indeed. The whole thing is quite out of the question.”

If Veronica had been a biddable girl, that would have been the end of it. But she was made of starchier goods and so continued her assault, covert and dogged, on the resolve of both parents.

Her father was more easily got around than her mother, so it was on he that she plied her most aggressive strategies, until the very sight of her approach sent him fleeing into his library to bar and bolt the door. At last she had got him so worn to a frazzle, he said she had better go, then, only assuming that Henrietta and her husband would send their carriage for Veronica’s use, with grooms sufficient for her protection. Henrietta sent word that this would be done, and so it was settled.

Thoroughly satisfied with the outcome of her campaign, Veronica retreated to her room to contemplate what manner of dress she might wear . . . and, truth be told, to contemplate also what it might be like to meet a highwayman on a lonely stretch of road.

“Stand and deliver!” he would cry. And she would comply, of course, because being shot for a bangle or two was a fool’s way to go.

“Stand and deliver!” she mouthed at her reflection in the glass, and tried to imagine the sort of polite horror one should evince at the demand. Only, did one reply aloud? Without having even been introduced? Or did one comply without speech, as would be expected of a young lady?

The thought plagued her all through the preparations she made to her dress and hair. Really, William was correct. Her education on these matters was shockingly slight.

 

~*~

 

The sky was clear that night, and Georgy didn’t like it. Clear skies made for tricky getaways. The past three had all been done under cover of cloud, and one of those even under rain, so it had been the work of a few moments to spur a willing horse back into the thicket and cut off all efforts at pursuit.

Tonight it was clear, which meant the carriage rattling down the road, though it was exactly the carriage she’d been waiting for to complete her errand, was just as moonlit as any escape would be.

Maybe this was madness, then. Maybe there was no sense in pursuing the attempt . . . but the thought of Mother’s skin drawn taut and grey, tissue fine, over the birdlike bones of her face was enough to steel even the softest of nerve.

A pair of pistols were produced, and a surprisingly slight, cloaked figure on a hulking brute of a horse materialized in the lane, giving the coachman barely enough time to react.

“Who-oa!” he bade the tossing, frightened team. “What means—”

But he fell abruptly silent at the production of both pistols, and quickly put up his hands in surrender, which meant the cloaked bandit had clear access to the side window.

A pair of grooms on the back of the carriage hopped down without a whisper of complaint, and scorn burned in Georgy’s breast.

“Useless.”

“Pardon?” A pale face appeared at the window. “I didn’t catch that.”

Georgy blinked rapidly at the polite confusion manifest on the face of the newcomer. This was not Elias Crewe, nor even was it his wife Henrietta. For all that Henrietta was exactly as younger than her husband as any third wife should be, this girl was younger still, wrapped in a simple dark cloak. The hood had been pushed clear of her head to reveal artfully-arranged dark hair and two bright spots of colour high on her cheeks as she leaned out the carriage window to examine the scene.

“Did you perhaps say ‘stand and deliver’?” she prompted, when Georgy made no response. “Only I didn’t quite catch it, you see. Probably because of that scarf you’ve got over your mouth. I’d ask you to remove it, but I suppose it’s all part of . . . this.” She made an airy little gesture at the scene around them, so perfectly played to type that it might have served as the frontplate illustration of a novel.

“You’re not one of the Crewes,” Georgy said stupidly. The girl nodded confirmation of this transparently obvious fact, and Georgy felt absurdly grateful that she didn’t scorn Georgy for pointing it out.

“No, I’m Mrs. Crewe’s sister. Veronica—oh!” comprehension dawned. “You thought, because of the carriage . . . no, I’ve only borrowed it you see.”

Georgy did see, though she didn’t like it.

“Ill-met by moonlight,” she muttered, and tugged on the aforementioned scarf.

“I’m sorry,” Veronica was now fairly hanging out the carriage window, “I really can’t hear you at all through that thing. It sounded like you were quoting Shakespeare.”

“Um,” Georgy made a soft, throat-clearing cough, “don’t be silly.”

Veronica nodded, instantly apologetic.

“No, of course you wouldn’t quote Shakespeare. I’m sure highwaymen don’t. But you’re my first, you see, so I wasn’t certain. I was told you say ‘stand and deliver’ but you haven’t done that yet, so maybe William was mistaken.”

“Maybe.” Georgy was still staring. Veronica was no Titania, to be sure. But there was a deliciously compelling energy to her, a thoroughly bright and pretty fearlessness that made saying anything at all a far greater risk than escaping on an open road with a full moon overhead.

There were worse things to lose, Georgy thought, than your head.

“Do you want my jewelry?” Veronica prompted gently. “You haven’t asked for it yet. It isn’t very good. My mother has better pieces, but she wouldn’t come out tonight. So I’m afraid all I have to offer is this.”

She held out a minute gold chain, exactly the right size to fit around a slender wrist. It was on the tip of Georgy’s tongue to say Veronica could keep it, but at the last minute self-preservation won out over finer nature and she rasped her affirmation through the scarf.

“That will do nicely.” She jostled Bob Brown forward, and the gold bracelet was dropped tidily in the gloved palm.

“Now,” said Veronica, still all wide-eyed interest in the transaction, “how exactly does this bit work? Do we all lie on our stomachs while you escape? Or do we give our word of honour not to follow, which you trust, because you are the criminal here and not we?”

Lying on stomachs had not actually occurred to Georgy, but it seemed the perfect solution to the problem of moonlight.

“The—yes,” a pistol flashed toward the bank. “That.”

“Very well. Will you help me down? I don’t trust the road, and I’d hate to fall. It would do unpardonable things to my gown.”

“Then perhaps,” Georgy suggested, “you had better remain aloft.”

“Oh! Really?” Veronica looked genuinely delighted at the offer. “Well that’s very kind of you, I must say.”

What in tarnation had come over her? Georgy wondered. There was just something about the girl that compelled her to behave in the most lack-witted manner.

“Not at all,” she heard herself say. “And a pleasant evening to you hereafter, my lady.”

It was a wonder she didn’t doff her hat before kicking Bob Brown up the bank and into the thicket—it was just the sort of idiotic thing Veronica made her want to do.

“Come on Bob,” she urged her horse, shaking the encounter off with a supreme effort, “we’ve got a party to attend.”

 

~*~

 

Veronica was in very high colour as she entered the ballroom. The crowd was close, as crowds at country parties usually are, and it took her a good amount of searching before she located her sister and brother-in-law. Henrietta was delighted to see her, though not nearly as gratified at the tale of banditry as Veronica had hoped.

“You’re lucky to be alive!” she cried. “Anything might have happened. Do you know, when that blackguard held up the Tophams’ carriage, he actually struck Mr. Topham with his pistol butt?”

“Perhaps they were acquainted,” Veronica suggested. “Mr. Topham deserves to be struck a time or two, I think.”

“Veronica,” Henrietta sighed, “I must insist you be less nonsensical. Of course Mr. Topham is not acquainted with a highwayman. What an idea!”

Veronica did not voice the suggestion again, but she kept it all the same, and found she had not far to reach for it when she found herself backed into a corner, watching a dance, and her highwayman found her again.

It was a little confusing at first. The girl who came to stand beside her was a good head taller, but that of itself was not strange, since anyone knows that girls can be tall above the average. Her hair was fair, discreetly dressed, appropriate and unremarkable. Her gown, too, was of good cut and no more or less than suitable, so that was no indication. Even her face, though it was certainly a very fine face with clean, classical lines and good colouring, betrayed nothing out of the ordinary. But she was wearing Veronica’s bracelet, so once Veronica spotted that, there was no pretending she hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” she said politely, “I’ve not the pleasure of your name, so this is probably very rude, but . . . were you planning to give it back? Or only to rub it in a little that you’d got it? Because that would be very unkind of you, don’t you think?”

The taller girl looked down at her in real surprise. Then surprise was chased, in rapid succession, by fear and defiance, in that order.

“What if I were to say I didn’t know what you were talking about?”

“I would say you have my bracelet.”

“And if I said it had been given to me by somebody else? Or that I picked it up on the ground on my way here?”

“Then I don’t suppose there would be anything I could say about that,” Veronica allowed. “But I wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. Well, William maybe. But he’s miles away in town, and by the time he decided what he was going to do, you could probably be on a ship to the Indies. So there’s no real danger there.”

They looked at each other in that way of two people who should really not be anything close to friends, but find that against all odds they are considering friendship all the same, and maybe something even more.

“Here. Give me your wrist.”

Veronica obliged, and the unmasked bandit fit the bracelet around it. Her fingers flicked in deft reattachment of the clasp, and Veronica hoped that her glove, however thin it was, might have hid the worst of the way her pulse sped up at the contact.

“Thank you,” she said meekly.

“I had meant to slip it back to you without your seeing,” the taller girl admitted. “I honestly didn’t count on your picking it out. And, it’s Georgy.”

“What is?”

“My name.”

“Oh!”

“Far be if from me to deprive you of the pleasure.”

Veronica nodded. They stood against the wall in silence a little longer before Georgy spoke.

“I don’t mean to reject good fortune, or anything like, but don’t you really have any questions at all?”

“You mean, about how you spend your evenings?” Veronica considered. “No, I don’t think I have. I mean, I suppose you can’t be doing it for the money, or you’d not have returned my bracelet. And you don’t look like you’re starving. So you must be bored, and I can certainly understand that, though I wouldn’t risk hanging for entertainment.”

“Nor would I,” Georgy said quietly.

“Oh!” Veronica turned to face her, “then is it revenge? One doesn’t often consider a young girl would have cause to seek revenge.”

“Then one mustn’t have lived long in this world,” Georgy decided. “Young girls have plenty of reason to seek revenge.”

Veronica nodded solemnly, accepting this wisdom from a girl quite taller, if not perhaps so very older than she.

“I won’t enquire as to your reasons of course,” she said nobly, but Georgy dismissed this magnanimity with a wave of her hand.

“It’s a family matter.”

“I see,” said Veronica, who didn’t really, but could at least see Georgy did not care to discuss it.

“Anyway,” Georgy sank back against the wall a little, like she didn’t trust her own frame to hold her upright, “it’s very nearly done.”

“In that case I’m glad I got to be a part of it. I had always wondered what it might be like to be held up, you see.”

“And?”

“It was not altogether as exciting as I’d expected,” Veronica admitted, “but then, you were a bit hampered by the scarf.”

“Why,” Georgy laughed, “what did you imagine I would have done without it?”

Veronica did not answer, but the spots of colour on her cheeks deepened significantly. Georgy blinked in sudden, startled comprehension.

“Oh.”

“Yes, well,” Veronica busied herself with smoothing a nonexistant fold in her skirt, “I’ve had to adjust a number of expectations this evening.”

Georgy swallowed.

“Even so, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you realise one of them.”

Veronica smiled up at her, genuinely appreciative.

“Well,” she said, “there’s always next time.”

And the devil of it was, Georgy found herself genuinely hoping she was right.

 

~*~

 

That should have been the end of it for both of them. If they’d either of them been any two other girls, it really would have been. But Georgy was set on her plan and having discovered Veronica in the carriage she meant to hold up had only delayed her strategy slightly; it had not abated it.

So the next cloudy night the Crewe carriage set out, Georgy received notice through her usual channels and at once set to muffling herself and dressing Bob Brown in the silks that obscured his usual shape and colour.

She sat in wait as she always did, and she assailed the carriage as she always did, but this time there were far more than two timid grooms and a weak-willed driver in attendance. There were four rough men with long-bore rifles, and all four of them levelled these directly at her head.

Georgy, beneath her hat, broke into a cold sweat.

“All right,” Elias Crewe heaved himself from his carriage, plainly gleeful at having got the better of the highwayman where three of his neighbours had failed, “let’s have a look at you before we throw a rope around your neck, shall we?”

It was exactly the voice from her childhood, sneering, belligerent, declaiming all responsibility for the path that had led them to this place. Georgy clamped down on both her pistols. All right then, if this was the way she was to go, so be it. Let him explain it to his wife, if he could. She’d left a letter behind in protection against just this eventuality, enumerating not only her crimes, but also her reason for them.

Let them live that down, if they could.

But before Georgy could bring her pistol up to bear on the man who’d ruined her mother—she would never give him the name that, in other circumstances, might have fairly been his—a new voice, thickly muffled, broke in.

“Stand and deliver!”

Oh, _no_.

Georgy and Elias Crewe both swivelled to see a new figure on the bank, also mounted, though on a considerably smaller, squatter horse than Bob Brown. This one bore every sign of aggressive over-swaddling, as did its rider. There were several layers, Georgy thought, of ill-fitting clothes on that very slight frame . . . and a dashing tricorn hat besides.

Because what was a highwayman without her hat?

Hysteria bubbled up dangerously in Georgy’s belly and giggles threaten to spill out into her scarf, but she held them in with an effort. The newcomer had made a most judicious choice of target, aiming not for any of the armed outriders, but for the third button of Elias Crewe himself.

Crewe, Georgy knew, would have taken ample risk with any number of staff, but never with the life he held dear above all others.

“Lower your weapons,” he barked, a fine sheen of sweat standing out on his brow. When the guards showed signs of hesitation he flew into a frenzy, dashing the barrel of one rifle aside with his own hand, then another, until—

With an ear-shattering bang, one of the rifles fired.

The musket ball passed directly into the hand of Elias Crewe, who fell, screeching, to the ground. The stout little bandit on the horse nearly toppled, though the path of the ball had gone nowhere even near that direction: rather it seemed to be sheer surprise at the sound of the shot that had nearly proved the second bandit’s undoing.

“Good heavens,” came the muffled ejaculation, “I’d no notion they were so loud.”

Georgy, taking her moment where she found it, left Elias Crewe writhing in the dirt of the road. She sprang directly into the saddle and kicked Bob Brown back up the bank once more, past the uninvited helper, whom she beckoned after her with a curt, “WELL?”

The second rider, it proved, needed no encouragement, and turned rapidly in pursuit. It was a mere matter of minutes before the thicket and the cloud cover had worked their intended purpose, and swallowed them both.

 

~*~

 

Georgy did not trust herself to speak until they had both found shelter in a haymow. There she abandoned her seat on Bob Brown and stormed across to wrench the arm of her rescuer, forcing her down from the stout, swaddled pony.

“Ow!” cried Veronica, and tugged her scarf down from her face so Georgy could register the full measure of her dismay. “That was uncalled for.”

“I was about to say the same to you!” Georgy fumed. “What in the world did you think you were playing at back there?”

“I thought I was saving your life.”

“And when did I ask you to do such a foolish thing?”

“It’s not always the sort of thing one thinks to _request_ ,” Veronica said primly. “But I hadn’t thought it was the sort of thing one would ever _decline._ Had you meant to die? Because,” her features softened, searching the narrow strip of Georgy’s face left exposed between the brim of her hat and the edge of her scarf, “I think that would be a terrible waste.”

It was like her words were a chain affixed to a stopper. At the sound of them, all the fight, rage and resentment that had been simmering in Georgy since her earliest youth bled out like day-old dishwater.

“Oh.”

Veronica put her chin up a little, ignoring the fact that her pony had shambled off to one side to help itself to an unexpected second supper.

“He was your father, wasn’t he?” she said, and didn’t wait for Georgy to confirm or deny it, but plunged right on. “After we met for the second time, I asked Henrietta about the people who were robbed. Mr. Topham I knew of course. He is Crewe’s solicitor. The other two were Fordham and Ralston. Fordham was his property manager, so it was he who turned your mother out, and Ralston . . . I couldn’t actually make out his role in it, but I decided the other parts fit so well, he must have done _something_. And you were being so honourable and thorough about avenging yourself on them all, like a son who’d had a grievous wrong done to his family, if the son were a daughter instead. It was exactly like something out of a story.”

Her colour, Georgy thought, was always high. Veronica lived in a near-perpetual state of heightened interest in life, and it gave her cheeks the most glorious rosy sheen. Georgy licked her lips below the scarf.

“He introduced them,” she whispered. “He told my mother that Crewe was to be trusted, and so she trusted him. But he broke his word to her, and he left her for his first wife. He kept us for a while, like a bottle of drink in a desk drawer . . . a secret vice, you know. After his first wife died I think Mother had some hope of him, but then he married the next one and she saw what he really was. It undid her completely. She died just before he married your sister.”

“Henrietta doesn’t know about any of this,” Veronica said quickly, and Georgy had to smile under her scarf.

“I didn’t think she did, but even if she had, she’d have been little more than a child when it all took place. This has just been justice, delayed. You see? When Mother died, and he pretended that it didn’t matter, that _she_ didn’t matter, I only thought I’d better make it matter to everybody who got us into that situation in the first place.”

“By sticking them up on the highway?”

“I didn’t say it was a good plan,” Georgy said miserably. “It was just the only one I could think of. And I always made a point to take things that _did_ matter to them. Topham had this seal he was very proud of, given him by somebody terribly important . . . I took that. And I kissed Fordham’s wife, right in front of him . . . I had only meant to kiss her hand, but you could tell it was a thousand times better than anything she’d ever had before, so I ended up kissing a little more, in the end. She’s so much younger than him, and he’s terribly aware of his age around her.”

Georgy kicked at a stray bit of hay.

“It was all I could do, but it was better than nothing. And I’m not sorry; not even now. I didn’t plan what happened to Crewe’s hand, but he earned it, and I got to see it happen. It doesn’t bring Mother back, but it’s enough. It’ll have to be.”

Then she looked up and caught the look Veronica was casting at her.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You kissed _her_?” Veronica yelped. “All she had done was marry Fordham and sit there looking sad, and _she_ got a kiss?”

Georgy’s eyes widened. “Oh! Is that all?”

“Is it _all_?” Veronica fumed. “It’s cheek, is what it is! It’s—”

But what else it was would remain undiscovered, because Georgy had yanked down her scarf, caught Veronica around the approximate location of her waist (the layers of clothing made the exact location somewhat difficult to ascertain) and kissed her into silence.

“You know,” she said huskily, when at last they broke apart, “all you had to do was ask.”

Veronica’s eyes sparkled even in the gloom of the haymow.

“Truly?”

“On my honour,” declared Georgy. Veronica beamed.

“Stand and deliver,” she commanded, and the highwayman bent at once to obey.


End file.
